2006-10-09 04:00:00 PDT Baghdad -- U.S. troops engaged in ferocious clashes with militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in southern Iraq on Sunday, ratcheting up tensions between two of the most powerful forces in the country.

The predawn battles in the city of Diwaniya, where the U.S. military said American and Iraqi forces killed 30 fighters, come amid growing concern by senior U.S. officials that the Iraqi government lacks the political will to tackle the militias and death squads threatening to plunge the country into civil war.

The Mahdi Army, al-Sadr's well-armed militia, accused the U.S. military of trying to provoke an all-out war between the two forces and said only one of its members had been killed and perhaps two wounded.

"The American forces intend to launch a wide-scale operation against the Mahdi Army and will attempt to enter Sadr City," said Abdul Razaq al-Nadawi, the head of al-Sadr's office in Diwaniya, referring to the Shiite Muslim cleric's stronghold in the capital. "This will have a very dangerous impact on security in Iraq."

In Baghdad, police reported the discovery of at least 53 bodies dumped across the capital over the past 24 hours. All of the victims had been shot and tortured, and their hands were bound.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of five troops, bringing the American death toll for this month to at least 30. Three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 were killed Friday in the western province of Anbar; one soldier was killed by small-arms fire Saturday northwest of Baghdad; and another, assigned to the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division, was killed Saturday by a bomb in northern city of Mosul.

The clashes in Diwaniya, 80 miles south of Baghdad, began shortly after midnight when an American-Iraqi patrol entering the area to detain a "high-value target" was bombarded by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, the U.S. military said. At least one M1A2 Abrams tank was destroyed.

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The battles, which took place from about 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., did not result in any American or Iraqi Army casualties, according to Mohammed al-Askary, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry. He said reports from local officials indicated 10 militiamen had been killed, though he declined to identify them as members of the Mahdi Army.

Witnesses and local officials, however, said the gunmen clearly belonged to the Mahdi Army, although both Iraqi police and army officials said the number of casualties was far lower than the 30 dead announced by the U.S. military.

The fighting was the heaviest in Diwaniya since at least 40 Iraqi troops and militiamen were killed in a clash in August.

Al-Nadawi, the al-Sadr official, said members of the al-Sadr movement were shocked when American and Iraqi forces poured into the city Sunday.

"We had an agreement with the representatives of the prime minister since the fighting last month," he said. "The agreement states that the American forces do not enter our cities or residential areas in Diwaniya and all over Iraq. This has been followed until now."